Author: newco

You Didn’t Read These Stories? Why?!

By

The Best of NewCo Shift — Week of Nov. 21

Look, we all see the same notifications, and figure, eh, we’ll get to that. But these pieces are really worth your time.

It was a good week for new stuff at NewCo Shift. We’ve got a surfeit of thoughtful commentary on AI, Valley culture, tech regulation, the non profit and NGO world, and much more.

NewCo Shift also sources and edits extraordinary stories into Medium’s membership area, which is on a “metered paywall” similar to the New York Times. Anyone can read them, until they hit their limit. We’re including them in our roundup so you know about this great work.

Let us know what you’re interested in us covering or pitch your own stories at editorial@newco.co. And thanks for reading. It means a lot to us.

Read More

Understanding Venture Capital

By

Medium Premium Preview

Our new series takes a hard look at how venture capital works, and finds positives — and plenty of negatives.

Our latest Medium Premium series from author (and software company founder) Luke Kanies delves into the details of how venture capital firms work, from how they raise and return capital to their investors, to why the best companies tend to partner with the most successful investors, causing the gains to accumulate in the top firms. The series also focuses on venture’s lack of diversity, and argues for new approaches to fix what has become a glaring deficiency.

Kanies’ work does not pull punches. He warns founders against raising capital unless they truly understand the deal they are agreeing to: You must manage your company to grow toward a highly unlikely exit, and in doing so, you will likely run your company into the ground. Venture capital, he argues, is structured in such a way as to deliver trauma to everyone involved. After all, this is an industry built around making many bets, but expecting most to fail. The first series warns that If You Take Venture Capital, You’re Forcing Your Company To Exit, while the second piece explains how the spoils of success will keep accumulating at the top. The next installment, due early next week, examines the problem of diversity in the sector.

But all is not gloom and doom in the world of venture capital. The series will soon shift to how we might build a more open market around investment and company creation. That way, venture capital can include, enrich, and benefit all parts of the economy.

Read More

The Best Of NewCo Shift — Week of November 7th

By

Once again, here’s a summary of our most popular and impactful stories we’ve recently published. Thanks for both reading and sharing these stories. Remember to follow us on Medium and social media to receive real time notifications from all our stories as they go live.

We also want to remind our readers that NewCo Shift sources and edits extraordinary stories into Medium’s membership area, which is on a “metered paywall” similar to the New York Times. Anyone can read them, until they hit their limit. We’re including them in our roundup so you know about this great work — and we may be biased, but we think Medium membership is well worth it!

Let us know what you’re interested in us covering or pitch your own stories at editorial@newco.co.


We’ve Not Thought Through the Legal and Ethical Disruption of Augmented Reality

Read More

Shift Forum Reads

By

The books we’re reading at NewCo as we prepare for the conversation at the Shift Forum this February


NewCo Shift is committed to identifying and exploring the most pressing issues in business and society through a new Shift Reads program. At the NewCo Shift Forum this coming February, we plan to discuss and debate solutions to those issues — even if the conversation is at times uncomfortable. If you’re interested in Shift Forum’s new Reads program, be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter here.

Fake News, Information Warfare and the Modern State: How Did We Get Here?

It took me longer than I expected to read Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, and longer still to write up this review (I began reading the book when it came out this past summer). That’s not necessarily the best way to open an essay on an important topic, but at least it’s honest. While its title promises a popular history of the kind of social media activism that sparked movements like #BlackLivesMatter and the Arab Spring, the book is in fact a far more nuanced, and often academic study of the impact digital platforms have had on political change over the past two decades. But if we are to understand more recent developments such as information warfare and fake news, we must bend into the work of scholars like Tufekci.

Read More

Life Lessons Working at Playboy

By

Medium Premium Preview

Earning a living at America’s most famous men’s media company

Our latest Medium Premium series includes a compilation of life and work lessons learned by Hugh Garvey while he worked at America’s most famous men’s media company. Harvey’s experience as the top editor at Playboy wasn’t just a job as one would imagine it, unless your work requires you to attend sex parties, write sex columns or enjoy a drink at work.

Harvey’s life lessons, although out of the ordinary, can help understand the importance of mentally showing up, being pushed beyond your comfort zone, improvising within the challenges, and being able to comeback intact the next day. These experiences apply to pretty much every job out there, whether that is thinking on your feet, your relationship with your boss, or how to deal with the unexpected. This series is not just fun read, but an essay about life and work.

Read the whole series: Workboy

Read More

The Best Of NewCo Shift — Week of October 24th

By

Business must lead. That’s the theme of NewCo Shift this year, and certainly this past week or so. Read on for an overview of the most popular and impactful stories we’ve recently published. Thanks for both reading and sharing these stories. Remember to follow us on Medium and social media to receive real time notifications from all our stories as they’re published.

We also want to remind our readers that NewCo Shift sources and edits extraordinary stories into Medium’s membership area, which is on a “metered paywall” similar to the New York Times. Anyone can read them, until they hit their limit. We’re including them in our roundup so you know about this great work — and we may be biased, but we think Medium membership is well worth it!

Let us know what you’re interested in us covering or pitch your own stories at editorial@newco.co.


No Purpose? No Problem

Read More

We’re Making Systems That Decide Things For Us. But Do We Know How They Do It?

By

Medium Premium Preview

The powerful and often shortsighted ways in which our creations are making our choices for us.

Continuing our partnership with Medium Premium to create series in conjunction with noted authors and journalists, Guidance Systems, by science and tech reporter Jacob Ward, explores the role technology is having in our decision making process. The premise of this series: We’re building technologies and businesses that shape our lives in dramatic and fundamental ways, without throughly analyzing the long-term consequences of these actions. Military robots that have already taken the ethics of war out of human hands. Addiction specialists who are building the neuroscience of habit into apps. Children’s television producers are trying to use their shows to build certain values into their young audience.

Ward refers to these technologies as Guidance Systems, tech that seems to improve our lives by offering us new choices, but also shape or remove our ability to decide things for ourselves. Addictive social media, killer robots, and other systems that can bring out the best and the worst of humanity. Shouldn’t we understand them better?

Explore the Series here: Guidance Systems

Read More

Is A Massive Devaluation for Both Google and Facebook on the Horizon?

By

Medium Premium Preview

The internet giant’s stocks are based on a reality that no longer exists, argues author Rick Webb

In our latest Medium Premium story, Rick Webb examines the future revenue of digital advertising, and how the current valuations of our largest digital media companies don’t add up. Webb writes that the only thing that Google — and Facebook — have going for them in the battle for advertising dollars is their massive P/E (stock price-to-earnings ratio) ratios, which helps them acquire suddenly popular, smaller content developers. However, the high valuation of the stock prices are based in realities that are no longer applicable. Brand dollars aren’t moving to digital, and the content that attracts those dollars doesn’t obey the same economic principles as software.

Other content creators like Disney and Time Warner have stocks valued much lower than tech companies with similar business models — for a reason. Those traditional media companies are valued against the very real cost and scaling realities of high quality content creation. Will this reality catch up to Facebook and Google, who count on digital media dollars for the vast majority of their valuations? Read the entire article here:

Google’s $350 Billion Haircut

Read More

What We Don’t Know (A Lot)

By

Medium Premium Preview

The big questions that medicine is still struggling to answer

NewCo Shift produces a number of Medium Premium series, articles created in conjunction with noted authors and journalists. One such series is What We Don’t Know, by Thomas Goetz. This series explores the reasons why the most basic problems in medicine are some of the hardest to solve. The first article in the series explores the reasons why we really don’t know how to count dead people.

In 2010, the World Health Organization’s World Malaria Report put the number of annual global deaths caused by malaria at 655,000, but that number, however, turned out to be wrong. A correction by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that the actual number was closer to 1.2 million deaths. Goetz asked himself, how could the mortality estimate for malaria, a disease that gets a great amount of attention and resources, and a disease that has such long history and distinct pathology, be so wrong? And how was it possible to get the number right?

Read the first article here to find out why getting the numbers right is really hard to do, and why we must get it right in order to understand human health. The second in the series is due this week, so stay tuned!

Read More

Exploring the Workflow of Authors

By

Medium Premium Preview

We’ve been writing with word processors for 40 years. What if we’ve been doing it wrong all this time?


In another Medium Premium series created in conjunction with noted authors and journalists, Workflow, by Author Steven Johnson, interviews famous authors and creators about the tools, techniques, and habits behind the creative mind. This series features conversations with Liz Phair, Rebecca Skloot, Kevin Kelly, and more.

The series intro explores tinkering with workflow, experimenting with new tools and approaches. Johnson enjoys talking to other creative people (sometimes other writers, but not always) about their habits and the technology they use to aid their creative process.

Read More